Project 2003 vs PMW...

[Fran?ois]

Hi,

Yes I know PMW from ABT has disappeared under this specific form.

I disconnected for the last 5 years from the project management tools
and I saw that Project 2003 seems to have received several
improvements which seem to close at least partially the gap with PMW.

I was wondering if someone knowing PMW could confirm if the resource
driven planning as in PMW and the tracking separated from the planning
are properly supported now in Project 2003?

Thanks in advance and kind regards,

François

 

[Fran?ois]

I have started doing some tests and I have come accross the first
doubt:

When modeling a maintenance task and its impact on the development of
the next phase (all this is for software development), I used to
define the maintenance as high priority and assign the resources to it
at a percentage like 20%.

PMW, back in the old time, whould then take 20% of the resource on
maintenance and assign the rest of the time of this resource to the
development tasks _in parallel_.
I have tried to test this with Project and the best I could get was a
resource assigned 20% max on a high priority tasks and doing nothing
in parallel and starting to work on the development tasks only when
maintenance workload provision is entirely used up.

Is there a way to get MSP to plan the using using the resource at
100%? If not, what is the point of limiting the assignment of a
resource on a specific task?

Anyone with a recommendation on how to model the resources being
partially used on a maintenance task?

Thank you in advance for your help,

François

 

[Fran?ois]

Ok, I remembered the problem from the old times. It seems that Project
keeps considering that the %of assignment is an absolute and fixed
value whereas to me it should be considered as a max to not exceed.

Meaning that if the user manually makes sure that the sum of
allocation % of one resource to all tasks is 100% or less, then MSP is
assigning the load properly.

To me this makes the thing not really usable since I don't really want
to have to manually make sure that the sum is 100%.

Is there a way to tell MSP to consider the allocation % as max to not
exceed and not as value to match at any price?

Thanks,

François

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi François,

Leveling Week by Week or Month by Month gives a result close to what PMW
would give (sorry, but day by day doesn't)

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620

 

[Fran?ois]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your answer. Could you please elaborate a little bit as I'm
afraid I'm lacking a bit of understanding of MSP subbtelties to
understand well what you are saying?
I had the impression reading the help documents that day by day was
really the only levelling level that was meaninful

Thanks,

François

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Take two tasks, one 50%, One 100% of same resource, both with 6 days
duration
Leveling Day by day will give a total duration of 12 days (that is what you
complain about I guess)
Leveling Week by week shortens the duration and fully loads the resource in
teh first week.
What made you think Day by Day was any more meaningful? IMHO that depends on
your project, not on the SW.

Greetings,
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620

 

[Mike Glen]

As I understand it, the selection of the granularity setting is based on the
management requirement of how much interference is needed between the
Project Manager and the workers. For example, a week by week setting will
(assuming the standard 40 hour week) not bother to level any allocations if
during the week there are less than 40 hours assigned to a resource. So if
a resource is assigned 12hrs on Monday through Wednesday totalling 36 hours,
no levelling will take place, allowing local management to sort out overtime
and time off to meet the plan. This will apply to all levels of granularity
with the exception of minute by minute for obvious reasons. This is
deliberate in Project to prevent over-managing the minutiae of detail if it
is not warranted.

Mike Glen
MVP Project

 

[Kevin Gaza]

So the solution is a half-baked solution, it sort of takes care of the
problem. Which means it is not a solution: Take two tasks of duration
2 weeks and have Task one with a resource assigned at 50% and the
second task with the same resource assigned at 100% and the resource
works 4 hours a day on Monday and Tuesday, and then jumps up to twelve
hours a day on Thursday and Friday. Sure, leveled for the week, but
what a goofy schedule. It also generates a schedule that makes the
work take longer to complete than it should. If this is a tool, it is
a poor tool.

The only answer is you have to write your own leveling routine in
Visual Basic---and what a monster that would have to be! Maybe
someday an open source tool for project management will appear and
this sort of nonsense will dissappear.

 

[Steve House]

Is it really that half-baked? I'm thinking what you're asking leveling
to do is - Task 1 duration 10 days, assigned 50%, 4 hours per day for a
total of 40 man hours. Task 2 duration 10 days assigned 100%, ie 8
hours per day for 80 man-hours. It sounds like you want leveling to say
he's only working 4 hours a day on Task 1, therefore leveling should put
him 4 hours on Task 2 in parallel with 1 until 1 is done then switch 2
to 100% until it too is completed, for a total duration of 3 weeks with
the resource working a total of 8 hours per day for the full time
period.

That certainly would be one viable option but it's not the only valid
arrangement possible and how's Project to know? For that matter, how is
Project to know that it is ok to adjust the assignment percentage on
Task 2 as needed but it's not ok to adjust the assignment percentage on
Task 1 with leveling increasing 1's 50% to 100% and reducing its
duration? It's just as logical to increase 1 to 100% as it is to reduce
2 to 50% for part of its total time. Project knows nothing about the
nature of the work itself or the task's requirements and what is and
what is not permissable, that's your job <grin>. Project is just a
glorified calculator.

Consider the argument that says Project would assume you assigned him
only 50% on the first task because he's tied up elsewhere in the
universe outside the project for 4 hours a day. If it were it were at
all possible for him to have worked on Project activities for a total of
8 hours a day during that time period, you would have assigned to task 1
at 100% and gotten it done in 5 days instead of 10. Because you didn't,
he must be only available to you for 4 hours a day (even though on the
whole he would be available 100%, that time period is an exception
although we don't know or care what it is that's consuming the other 4
hours) and so he should not be assigned to any work at all on task 2
because his total available time is being consumed by work on 1. How's
Project to know that that's not the case in this particular situation
because some other times it certainly will be?

You can manually enter a work pattern such as you want leveling to do
and Project will respect it. But it doesn't have the intellegence to
know that that one specific pattern, out of all the possible ones, is
the one to use in this specific case and I don't see how any software
could reliably make those managment decisions for you. It's an aid to
your expertise, not a replacement for it.

 

[John Beamish]

Exactly!

[snip]